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| Alien abduction stories are crazy but if they are real the aliens must have a reason to grab people. |
Nothing ruins a good space invasion movie faster than a dose of reality. Why would aliens even want to visit Earth? Our microbes might be deadly to them. If they any kind of ethics they might realize their microbes could be deadly to us.
My brother said if we were the space aliens we'd probably do like biologists do with field animals. They hide behind camouflage and study the animals without disturbing them. My younger sister says we'd watch creatures on another world like we were on safari in Africa.
We came up with a list of things we would do if we were space aliens visiting another planet. This is all based on what we do with animals here on Earth:
- Hunting animals for food and trophies
- Herding animals for food and labor
- Studying animals to see how they live
- Taking pictures of animals for keepsakes and memories
- Capturing animals to dissect them
- Watching animals in a zoo
You don't hear stories about space aliens using people for forced labor. We guessed they would have robots to do that. If we ever get into space everyone assumes we'll have robots to help us.
I hope space aliens don't ever see us as a food source. I should think we'd be a very expensive meal. That's like getting into a sports car, driving across a continent to some back woods restaurant, ordering a hamburger, and then driving home. They would have to be some crazy sick rich aliens to want to come here to eat some Earth cuisine (even if they're not eating humans).
Earth could be a kind of wildlife refuge for aliens from other planets. They could come here to study us in our natural habitat. But why would they do that? Maybe just to advance their science and understanding of the universe.
Everyone agreed that if some alien civilization can travel across the stars they don't want our water. But what if they saw potential in us? Then maybe they might decide we pose a threat to them somewhere in the future so they decide to kill us off before we can reach the stars. That would leave more of the universe for them.
Dad made a good point. He said that it takes a lot of energy to lift mass into orbit. It takes even more energy to escape the sun's gravity. So if aliens expend all that energy to get to another planet, either they are stranded or they are looking for very rare elements that are more likely to be found on rocky planets. Isn't that what we would do?
You'd think aliens would mine the asteroid field first but what if what they need isn't in the asteroid belt? What if the rare elements they want are scattered so far across the Solar System it's just easier to land on a habitable world and take what they need?
Dad also said there may be some things that can only be produced on a planet like Earth. That's the opposite of what they do on the International Space Station. The ISS is a microgravity environment where scientists study processes that cannot be replicated on Earth. So maybe nature makes compounds here on Earth that you need to survive in space.
If we ever develop ships that can visit other stars, we think those ships would be able to get what they need from asteroids and moons. They'd only expend the energy needed to land on and leave a planet if they couldn't find resources elsewhere. So it makes sense that space aliens might visit Earth for a similar reason. We could be a way station on the superhighway of the galaxy.
I'm not saying I believe in all the UFO reports. We had a fun evening talking about why space aliens would invade Earth. Maybe the next movie will use some of our ideas and we'll get credit. If not then I hope they have actors as good as Aaron Eckhart.
